kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to switch to e-tendering for allotment of parking lots under the civic body in the city.
The KMC has decided to do away with the physical tendering process for the purpose. The decision was confirmed on Monday by Debashsish Kumar, the member mayor in council (MMIC) of the Parks and Squares department that also deals with parking issues.
He said that the decision was taken keeping in mind a directive of the state government which has now made a rule that all when the value of a tender is above Rs 1 lakh, need to be done electronically. He said that since most of these tenders are above that ceiling, KMC will be allotting parking lots through e-tenders.Sources in the department said that the KMC had to junk multiple physical tenders it floated in the beginning of this year for allotment of parking lots but most of them had to be finally cancelled, keeping in mind the state government directive. It is learnt that the reason behind setting such a rule was that e-tenders have more transparency than physical ones.
An official said that tender values for parking lots are generally in lakhs. Lack of transparency can pave the way for corruption which includes one party restraining another from participating in the bidding process which can get very competitive. This was also the main motive behind doing the entire process electronically.
Most of the tenders that were cancelled by end-March will now be again refloated but electronically, it was confirmed. Additionally, an official said that this can also be seen as part of the Ease of Doing Business which the KMC has taken up actively.
Millennium Post on 1 April reported that KMC has several plans in the pipeline under its ‘E-Governance’ objective which includes a new application to detect and manage illegal car parking with integration to VAHAN app of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India. In addition to this, KMC sources said an online facility for night route parking permission is also going to be launched soon.